Officers of Parliament (Terms of Service) (Amendment) Regulations (No. 3), 2025

The Committee on Standing Rules and Orders has amended the retirement provision for Officers of Parliament, replacing section 30(1) of the Officers of Parliament (Terms of Service) Regulations, 2018 with effect from 1 January 2025.

As published, the new subsection says an officer appointed on pensionable terms of service "(a) may have a pensionable age of sixty-five years, with the option to retire at seventy years on a full pension", with any retirement after the sixty-fifth year and before the seventieth deemed to be early retirement; and "(b) shall have a pensionable age of seventy years."

The difficulty is that the amendment gives no condition separating paragraph (a) from paragraph (b). Comparable provisions elsewhere tie the two limbs to whether an officer was appointed before or after a stated date, but this text does not, so it does not say on its face which officers keep sixty-five with an option to seventy and which simply retire at seventy. An officer close to sixty-five should not assume either limb applies to them without confirming their position with Parliament's administration.

What is clear is the direction: seventy is now available to officers on pensionable terms as a full-pension retirement age, and retiring between sixty-five and seventy counts as early retirement rather than normal retirement.

The regulations were made under section 154(5) of the Constitution rather than under an Act, and were gazetted on 4 April 2025.